Mount Sinai Hospital’s Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute is proud to join a new global alliance of more than 70 organizations around the world with the aim of setting new, unified standards for managing and sharing of genomic and clinical data to enable rapid progress in biomedical research and to advance human health.

Led by Dr. Catharine Whiteside, Dean of the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine and Vice Provost, Relations with Health Care Institutions, the Global Alliance was recently launched locally with seven other University of Toronto-affiliated organizations including Mount Sinai Hospital, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), University Health Network, and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, which also serves as the Secretariat for the International Cancer Genome Consortium.

The past decade has brought about an explosion of genomic data in medical research. But currently much of this data is collected and analyzed in isolation – by disease, by country, or by institution - limiting its impact. The alliance aims to bring together ethics, privacy, medicine, research and technology to set new, unified standards that will allow data across the world to be shared in a responsible, ethical manner. A standardized system will allow for the aggregation of data and help researchers worldwide collaborate to tackle more complex problems with more efficiency.

“Mount Sinai Hospital’s Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute is proud to be a founding member of this global alliance. An alliance of this scope will be instrumental in resolving some of the major hurdles to bringing new genomics knowledge and technology into medical practice and will ensure timely translation of genomics discoveries into improved population health,” says Dr. Katherine Siminovitch, Director, Personalized Genomics and Innovative Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital and a Senior Investigator with the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute.

Previously, Dr. Siminovitch has developed a genetic test for a rare and usually fatal immune deficiency disorder called Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome. She and her research team have also identified gene variants associated with risk for rheumatoid arthritis and other debilitating autoimmune diseases.